Annex C: Good Practice Examples

Angus Council

Angus Council and Crowdfunder is an innovative partnership to
help Angus community organisations, businesses, individuals and
social enterprises ideas happen. Since its launch in August 2015
the Crowdfund Angus portal
[43] has supported 40 local projects and has raised over
£159,488 to the period August 2017.

Angus Council uses crowdfunding as a complementary service to
the Angus Council Community Grant Scheme and also to national
funders for communities and businesses to lever in the funding they
require to deliver projects that matter.

Based on the projects funded to date, the benefits to Angus
amount to more than money by showing validation and support of
projects that will benefit a whole community. These range from
lifesaving community defibrillators throughout Angus to youth
sporting teams, community gardens and many more.

One of the many Crowdfund Angus success stories is the Bon Scott
Statue and the impact of visitor numbers to Kirriemuir. Statistics
provided by
DD8 Music from the
statue’s google maps page since launched in April 2016 shows
a total of 38,835 unique visitors from 131 countries to Kirriemuir.
The Bon Scott Statue is also number one in the top eighteen tourist
attractions to visit in Kirriemuir and the surrounding area.

North Coast 500 (
NC500)

NC500 is the brand new
touring route that aims to bring together the best of the Scottish
Highlands. Dubbed Scotland’s own Route 66 the new scenic
route is a chance to experience all that is great about the
Scottish Highlands.

The
NC500 route begins in
Inverness and ends at Britain’s most northerly village, John
O’Groats, completing the loop back in Inverness.

NC500’s additional
impact in terms of visitor numbers to the North Highlands between
2015 and 2016 is in the region of 5 per cent to 15 per cent. Taking
the 10 per cent midpoint, it is estimated that an additional 29,000
visitors have been attracted to and an additional £9 million
visitor spend generated for the North Highlands in Year 1, 2016.
This level of impact is significant given that the North Highlands
has struggled historically to attract large volumes of visitors,
even when Scotland and the Highlands as a whole have had good
tourism years.

The positive impacts of the
NC500 have been reported
across all parts of the North Highlands and across different
business types. This has included increased custom in cafes and
restaurant along the
NC500 route and at tourist
attractions. The popularity of the route has also helped to
increase occupancy levels across all accommodation types, which in
turn has led to a reduced need for businesses to discount (so
increasing turnover and profit).

“In some of the popular areas of Highland, notably those
that have seen a rapid and significant surge in demand for visitor
accommodation such as areas on the North Coast 500 touring route,
the anecdotal evidence is that the peer to peer accommodation
market has helped satisfy the level of demand. This is demonstrated
by industry feedback such as “There is simply not enough
formal B&B accommodation in the Black Isle and around the
NC500 route in general and
peer to peer accommodation such as AirBnB fills the gap.”

Liftshare - Jaguar Land Rover Liftshare

Liftshare is a platform that enables organised car sharing by
connecting people travelling in the same direction so they can
arrange to travel together and share the costs, whilst reducing
congestion and pollution at the same time.

In 2015, Jaguar Land Rover
[44] recruited the services of Liftshare to embed car sharing as
a sustainable mode of transport for employees traveling to work.
Since then, car sharing has not only contributed to lowering the
carbon footprint of Jaguar Land Rover’s operations, but has
also eased the demand for parking at its sites and reduced traffic
in the local community.

Jaguar Land Rover operates on their private car sharing
community software, the platform connects drivers with empty seats
to passengers looking for a lift. The overall focus of their scheme
has been to improve access to work for all their staff, local
congestion and car park management.

Some of the business and environmental benefits to this for
Jaguar Land Rover are:

Manages demand for car parking spaces – saving the
business in excess of £1.5 million annually in reduction of
additional parking and maintenance costs*.

Enhances the business’ ethos of encouraging a healthy
and balanced lifestyle amongst staff.

Enables employees to network and meet new colleagues.

Saves employees money – cost saving
£5,000,000*.

Reduces levels of single occupancy vehicles on site reducing
carbon emissions, pollution and noise.

Contributes towards environmental and sustainability
targets.

Saves 3695.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum*.

* based on a 12 month forecast from the confirmed journeys
through the Liftshare system

TrustonTap – Changing the way we care

TrustonTap
[45] has developed a collaborative marketplace platform to
connect older people (and their families) directly with
self-employed care workers, avoiding the need for traditional care
agencies and enabling improved quality of care.

The platform enables customers to pay less for homecare and care
workers to earn more than they would through agencies. Due to smart
use of technology, the carers keep around 80 per cent of their
client’s fee compared with around 40 per cent via a
traditional care agency. TrustonTap feel that this means carers are
better motivated and better able to deliver quality care to their
clients and that the professional back-up of TrustonTap ensures
consistency, reliability and peace of mind for both clients and
carers.

Founder William Cotton comments:

“Over the last 18 months we have made significant
progress in our desire to revolutionise the provision of care
across the region. We have built a new type of care business that
improves the way in which we look after the most vulnerable in
our communities, whilst also ensuring that we are improving the
rewards and motivation of the care workers that support
them”

VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance
Programme

VisitScotland operates an internationally recognised star graded
quality assurance (
QA) scheme
[46] for a wide variety of businesses operating in the
accommodation, visitor attraction and food and drink sectors. The
scheme provides an
independent,
authoritative and
trusted source of advice, support and benchmarking
for the industry and a high level of reassurance for visitors with
95 per cent saying the star grade met their expectations.

The assessment is made by a team of highly experienced advisors
who provide a detailed, objective and impartial report on a range
of factors affecting the quality of a visitor experience. Advice is
also supplied on a range of other business related issues such as
digital performance, sustainability, accessibility and signposting
to other sources of more detailed support and information.

Results from the scheme show that
QA stimulates a total
additional annual investment in fabric improvements and people
skills of £59 million a year.

QA’d businesses
receive over 1 million referrals from the main consumer facing web
site visitscotland.com, 30 per cent more than non-
QA’d
businesses.

Participants receive significant increases in customer
satisfaction levels, turnover and occupancy rates. Businesses
signing up to our digital surgeries on the back of a
QA visit have recorded
increases of up to 80 per cent in turnover.

VisitScotland has ‘exported’ its
QA Scheme to Northern
Ireland, Sweden, Flanders, Malta and Namibia in addition to
supporting other destinations in Europe and Canada.